Vacations in the Subconscious – Surrealist Summer Camp – Los Angeles 2023

CURATED BY THE NEW MUSEUM OF NETWORKED ART
Surrealist Summer Camp Los Angeles/Cologne is an exchange between physical space (Los Angeles/Torrance Art Museum) and virtual space (Alphabet Art Centre/Cologne). The project includes 200 videos by 180 artists, from 50 countries, curated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne, half in Los Angeles and the other half online.

Video screening

WASSERMUSIK
Experimental Music Video (2022)

“Wassermusik” is a pop-cultural attempt at illustrating the construction and fluidity of femininity. In it a vortex of aquatic sounds are blurred with whirls of neo-dadaist images.

CAPTAIN FIFFY ART COLLECTIVE
Oliva Artner, Gary Berger, Naima Noelle

More Info about WASSERMUSIK

Vacations In The Subconscious

The title of the exhibition project “Vacations in the Subconscious” is referring to the influence of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis in the arts and philosophy of the 20th century explaining people’s behaviors/acting directed from the Subconscious.
Surrealism was one of several art expressions developing simultaneously in the beginning of 20th century at a historical turning point – facing the industrialization, the horrors of World War I and the desire of people one hundred years ago for a kind of counter movement which was not dominated/ directed by mind. 100 years later these days, there is a similar turning point – think of the global climate change, the digitalization, the uprising wars in many parts of the world, this not just the Russian War against Ukraine, generating again the need for counter realities – a more spiritual world.

The exhibition is not intending to initiate a kind of revival of Surrealism, it would be not necessary, because the Surrealist ideas propagating new kinds of freedom via imaginary worlds, became the genetic code of contemporary art and a variety of expressions in most different manifestations in art, culture, philosophy, literature, language and, commercially, in advertising, for instance, but – explore how contemporary artists of the 21st century working with a medium which did not exist yet during the classical Surrealist era (ending in the sixties of past century) – e.g. (digital) video art offering new ways of representing reality/diverse realities, are influenced by the ideas/ideology/utopias/spirit/ imagery of Surrealism and the visual and substantive clichés Surrealism was generating.

Exhibiting the Surrealist Project is the invitation to the visitor/viewer of art to dive deeply to the bottom of one’s soul via moving images and recognize the difference between videoart, cinema and video as an advertising medium, as well.
Digital video is representing quite a young medium starting only about 20 years ago, offering its user/creator fundamentally new possibilities using moving images for artistic purposes.
The simultaneous presentation of The Surrealist Project on different continents and realities does not only allow facing art in different realities but give the Surrealist ideas also a new stage of perception. Therefore, the chronological aspect became relevant in the exhibition concept – spotlighting the technological development and its manifestation in the content presentation during the past 20 years.
Vacations in the Subconscious would like to show a diversity of artistic concepts and the use of technology as a tool for transporting Surrealist ideas.

Surrealist Vacation Resort Los Angeles 2023— a video art exhibition, curated by The New Museum of Networked Art

Torrance Art Museum